The Conservation of Magic Read online

He reached inside his shirt and touched the stone that hung against his chest. It was no bigger than a grape and was once again as cold as the dirt in a grave. It resembled polished black granite but with pulsing metallic green and red veins that swirled and changed hue like smoke just beneath its shiny surface.

  The truth that he had been adopted was the first thing his dad had given Merrick on his deathbed a few weeks ago. The enigmatic stone that was the only clue to the identity of his real father had been the second.

  #

  Larry sprinted through the back streets of Old Town—his heart beating twice as fast as his feet pounding on the wet sidewalk. He tried to remember where his car was, but it was hard to think straight, and he still couldn’t hear worth a damn. Whatever happened back there with that fat loser and his bitch girlfriend had royally screwed up his head.

  All his life he’d been the strongest of his friends, and people had either feared or followed him. In high school, his counselor had called him a bully, but Larry knew that wasn’t right. He was a predator, just like that dinosaur in that movie he rented last week. He sure didn’t feel much like one of those dinosaurs now—running for his life while Bobby was sprawled out dead back there in the alley.

  The two of them had made a good team, setting up their marks, taking their time, hunting people like animals. Tonight, they were just plain unlucky. Picked the wrong couple at the wrong time. Might have been just a goddamn freaky storm, but he had a bad feeling that if he had waited around to figure it out, he’d be dead right now, too.

  Everything had been going great until four-eyes had opened his mouth and that weird sound had come out of him—like hitting a bass note in a rock concert with the stacks of speakers turned all the way up. The whole alley had started to shake and stuff was jumping all over the place. He knew it was time to get out of there when he felt like there was a million little ants crawling all over his skin—right before that loud bang and that friggin’ lightning that fried Bobby.

  Last thing he remembered was looking over his shoulder on his way to the fence and Bobby being on the ground with a damn big smoking hole in the middle of his chest. He felt bad just leaving him like that, but it was survival of the fittest in the streets.

  And now, he was still fit, and Bobby was stone cold dead.

  Just a few more turns and he’d make it to his car. He’d high tail it out of there before the cops started looking for him and be home in no time flat.

  Stopping to rest for the first time since the alley, he stood at the street corner, bent over with his hands on his knees, struggling to breathe. He looked up and smiled. There it was, right across the street. He checked around just in case someone was looking, then started walking slow and easy like nothing was even going on. Soon, he’d be home sacked out in front of the tube with a cold beer in his hand and some painkillers in his gut.

  His foot touched down in the center of the street just as a rickety car lurched around the corner. He tried to jump out of the way, but the car still clipped his leg and sent him spinning. He landed face down in the next lane over. He slowly rolled onto his back and wiped at the blood and gravel covering his forehead.

  The car that hit him had smashed into the side of a parked van just twenty feet away. The driver hung limply out of the driver’s side window. Looked like some old lady that shouldn’t have been driving anyway. He heard the sound of a baby crying its head off from the wreckage and just shook his head. Survival of the fittest in action once again.

  Larry tried to stand up, but his left leg collapsed under his weight as he fell back to the asphalt. First he cursed, but then he started laughing. He was the luckiest guy alive. He’d cheated death twice in one night, and so what if he had a broken leg? He also had an alibi in case anyone came around asking questions. But officer, how could I have mugged anyone with my leg all broke up like this?

  The road trembled and Larry twisted around in time to see a pair of headlights barreling toward him as he realized that his luck had finally ran out. The taxi hit him full on as he was crushed beneath the car’s grille.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE AMBULANCE SURGED through the red river of taillights typical of a rainy Saturday evening in Old Town. The driver steered hard to the right, shot the vehicle through an open pocket in traffic, and brought the ambulance to a hard stop. He cursed, blasting his horns and sirens before speeding forward again as more cars struggled to clear out of the way.

  Merrick and the paramedic lurched in the back of the ambulance with the vehicle’s jerky rhythm, while Mona was held fast, strapped to the gurney, still unconscious.

  “Hey man, can you tell me what happened back there in the alley?” the paramedic asked.

  Merrick stared entranced at the red and white lights refracted in the droplets of water on the back windows of the ambulance. He wasn’t sure himself what had happened, and the paramedic wouldn’t have believed what Merrick was beginning to suspect.

  The paramedic leaned slightly forward and lowered his voice.

  “Look, whatever fried that guy who attacked you back there was packing a lot of electricity. I’m guessing it was a lightning strike. Direct hit to the guy and your girlfriend got a secondary shock.”

  Merrick turned to look at the man’s face, but said nothing. The paramedic waited for an answer, then shook his head and turned his back to Merrick so his face was hidden from Merrick’s view.

  “Hey, man, can you hear me?” the paramedic said plainly. “Say something if you can hear me.”

  When the paramedic turned back around, Merrick nodded and raised his hand a few inches. The paramedic shuffled over and knelt in front of him. He shined a pen light into each of Merrick’s eyes, then reached around and palpated the back of his head. The paramedic sighed and sat down next to the outstretched and still unconscious Mona.

  “Lightning can do some strange things. Pass through one person and fry the next guy completely. But there’s usually some kind of mark—burns that look like feathering. That thug had a smoking hole in his chest, but the girl here…besides those bruises on her wrists and her face, I’m not seeing anything.”

  The paramedic looked at Merrick, waiting for him to pick up the conversation. After a long pause, the man looked back down at Mona.

  “Like I said, lightning can do strange things.”

  Merrick stared again at the two portal windows in the back doors of the vehicle. He had only wanted to help. Wanted their attackers to just stop. But he hadn’t wanted anyone dead…or had he? And Mona…he had never meant to hurt her. He had messed everything up and she was the one paying for whatever darkness had escaped from inside him.

  Thunder shook the ambulance, and flashes from the sky turned the night on and off like a natural strobe light. Rain pelted the roof like drops of lead, and the wind blustered and tossed the ambulance back and forth as it dodged through traffic.

  Maybe it wasn’t his fault. Maybe lightning, ball lightning or some weird version of it, had torn through the alley, killed that man, knocked Mona into a coma, and missed him completely. The likelihood seemed remote, but it could have happened—was more likely than some strange power emanating from Merrick’s brain causing the whole thing.

  Even as he thought of the scenario where he wasn’t to blame, he knew it was a lie. There were too many other things that were wrong.

  Merrick ran a mental diagnostic on his body for any hints of pain and found none. He raked his hand through his hair. It was full and thick like it had never been before, even in his youth. He probed his stomach. It was flat and hard. Looking around, he could see the inside of the ambulance in sharp detail, even though he had left his broken glasses in the alley. And his teeth. He was pretty sure he had lost several of them in the fight, but none of them were missing now, and cracked and missing teeth didn’t just grow back.

  No storm, no matter how odd, could explain his improved physical condition. Blaming everything on electricity from the sky was convenient and logical, but it was also a lie. He
knew guilt when he felt it, and he was full of it now. Somehow, even though it made no sense, he or something inside of him was responsible for what had happened back there. He was the one who led them down that alley. He was the one who had released god-knew-what from within. It was all his fault, and he was the one who had to make things right.

  The ambulance jerked to a stop. The paramedic sprang out of his seat and opened the back doors. A crowd of hospital workers in scrubs and lab coats flooded the back of the ambulance. They pulled Mona’s gurney out, extended its wheeled legs, and hurried her inside. A chubby nurse offered to help Merrick. Her smile was practiced and her accent too southern to be native to Northern Virginia. She took Merrick by the hand and led him to a wheelchair on the sidewalk.

  She wheeled him in to the emergency room where he spotted Mona being parked in a makeshift room with walls made of heavy curtains on ceiling tracks. As soon as she was in place, a latex-gloved hand reached out and whipped the curtains closed.

  Merrick started to get up from his wheelchair, but the nurse firmly pushed down on his shoulder and deposited him in his own curtained chamber at the other end of the emergency room.

  “Can I get up now?”

  “Just sit tight,” the nurse drawled. “Someone will be along to take a look at you in a minute.”

  “I need to know how she’s doing.”

  The nurse locked in her smile and placed herself firmly at the exit to his room.

  “Are you related to that young lady you came in with?”

  “She’s my girlfriend.”

  “I know it must be tough, Hon, but only relatives get to see her right now. Just wait here and I’ll find out how she’s doing for you. The best way you can help her is to let the doctors do their jobs and let someone take a look at you when they get a chance. Now, do you know the names of any family members we should contact for Miss…?”

  Merrick blushed. Mona and he had been together for over a year now, but he didn’t know any details about her family. He was pretty sure that her parents lived in Ohio, but that was about it.

  “Her name is Mona Whittle, but I’m not sure how to get in contact with her family. I can check her apartment later and look for her address book.”

  “Have you two not been going out for very long?”

  Merrick muttered something about having a bad memory. He had never been able to remember dates that were important to himself, much less other people. The nurse rolled her eyes and turned so sharply that her white tennis shoes squeaked against the floor.

  As soon as the nurse left, he stood up and peeked through the curtains. The emergency room bustled with men and women and tables on wheels zipping past each other, all parts of a synchronized but chaotic dance.

  He watched as two doctors holding clipboards briskly entered Mona’s room. A few minutes later, one of them left and walked over to the nurse, who pointed to his room. Merrick made it back to his wheelchair just before the doctor entered, closing the curtain behind him. The doctor sat down on a low stool in front of Merrick, flipping back and forth through several papers on his clipboard before looking up.

  “It says here in the police report that you and Miss Whittle were attacked tonight.”

  Merrick nodded. He would just answer the doctor’s questions as simply as possible, but he had dealt with enough medical professionals to know that there was no way this man would believe the truth about what had happened. Even he still didn’t believe it as much as he instinctively knew it.

  “One of the men who attacked you is dead and your girlfriend is in pretty bad shape—most probably in a coma although we have yet to determine the cause. So, now we see how you’re doing. Let’s have a look at your hands.”

  Merrick held his hands out in front of him as the doctor squeezed them and turned them over before letting them go.

  “They look fine,” he said as he continued his examination. “Anything you can tell me about what happened tonight would be helpful.”

  Merrick absently swept his hand across his flat stomach. He reminded himself silently to keep his answers simple. There had been two of them. He had tried his best to stop them, but it hadn’t been enough. Then lightning struck. And he couldn’t remember anything else.

  “Did they hit you in your stomach?” the doctor asked, noticing Merrick’s hand.

  He nodded again.

  The doctor asked Merrick to take off his sweater and raise his shirt. When he did, the doctor pressed on different parts of Merrick’s abdomen, looking up expectantly for some signs of soreness or pain. Finding none, the doctor tapped his pen on his clipboard and rolled his chair backwards, staring at Merrick as if trying to solve a puzzle.

  “She’s in a coma?” Merrick asked.

  “Appears to be. No obvious signs of injury that would be that traumatic—a couple of bruises on her shoulders and wrists—but nothing that should warrant her condition. I’m a little concerned about you right now, though. No signs of external injury, but the report says you were beaten by one of the men in the alley. Could be some internal damage as well, but the report says there was a lot of blood, and from the looks of your clothes, I was assuming that at least some of it was yours. But you say you’re feeling okay?”

  “Just a little sore and tired, but otherwise…”

  Merrick shrugged as he pulled his sweater back on, noticing that the blood stains were real enough. He hadn’t imagined that at least.

  “I want to take some X-rays just the same. Depending on what we find, maybe even a CT scan. Might be something going on that we can’t see with the naked eye.”

  Maybe the doctor was on to something. What if he was hallucinating? Lightning did funny things—jumped around, killed one person and left others unharmed. That’s what the paramedic had said. Maybe he really had been hit and his mind wasn’t working right. Maybe he only thought he was in better shape than he used to be.

  “Hey, Doc, can I ask you a question?”

  The doctor looked up from his clipboard and nodded.

  “Would you say that I was overweight? You looked at my stomach. Do you think I have a gut?”

  “I don’t think you should be worrying about that right now.”

  “Just tell me, please.”

  The doctor squinted at Merrick and frowned.

  “Mr. Jones, I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, but I have to ask if either of you were drinking or using illicit drugs tonight.”

  “I’m just thinking that if Mona was hit by lightning and I was hit by lightning…well maybe what I think I’m seeing isn’t real.”

  The doctor raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  “As of yesterday,” Merrick said, sheepishly, “I remember having the beginnings of a pretty good-sized gut.”

  Even as he said it, Merrick knew he had divulged too much information. Now the doctor would be curious.

  “If that’s what you remember, there’s a chance you might have a concussion. I want to get you to X-ray right away.”

  “Maybe I didn’t have a gut yesterday,” Merrick stammered. “I can’t remember. What I meant to ask was, can lightning do something like burn someone’s fat off or something like that?”

  “If it could, everybody would be walking around with lightning rods in their hands.”

  “Okay, so let me just ask if I look normal to you—physically speaking.”

  “I was going to ask about the heavy scarring around your umbilicus, but other than that, your stomach is…well, not only do you not have a gut, but I’d like to see you with some more subcutaneous fat in your abdominal area. If you really feel that you’re overweight, I have someone you should speak with after we get things cleared up here.”

  The rest of the doctor’s words entered Merrick’s ears as muffled sounds, unconnected and meaningless. The doctor had just confirmed that he wasn’t hallucinating or delirious. This wasn’t a dream. Somehow, his body had been physically altered, improved, and there was no logical explanation. Once again, there was only one
thing left for him to consider, and that was the illogical and the absurd—that his thoughts or his panic had unleashed a dark power from within him that had very real consequences. And that the mysterious stone from his real father had somehow been involved.

  The doctor’s hand on his shoulder snapped him out of his thoughts.

  “Stay here and I’ll have a nurse take you down to radiology,” the doctor said, scribbling on a slip of paper. “It should only take about half an hour. I’ll see you when you get back.”

  The doctor left the room, and within minutes, Merrick’s nurse entered. She asked how he felt, unlocked his wheelchair with a stomp of her foot, and rolled him away.

  When they arrived at the radiology department, the nurse checked him in. Soon a peppy technician with short sandy brown hair called his name and wheeled him back to be X-rayed. She asked him if he felt well enough to stand. Merrick assured her that he was fine, and then she asked him to take his shirt off. For the first time in his life, he did so without embarrassment. He thought he caught her glancing at his abdomen muscles as she motioned for him to remove his pendant from around his neck. He hesitated, but did as she requested, feeling suddenly vulnerable without the stone resting against his chest.

  For a second he considered trying to convince the nurse to take an X-ray of the stone itself. Two days after his father’s funeral, he had taken it to a jeweler to have it turned into a pendant. The rock had proven too hard to pierce and had destroyed one of the jeweler’s best diamond-tipped drill bits. The next day, he had wound a leather cord tightly around the stone and hung the pendant around his neck. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew it wasn’t a normal stone. There was something very different about the rock that seemed connected to him at an almost molecular level. It was also the only link he had to his real father. Somehow, Merrick needed to find out more about it.

  Deciding to explore the nature of the stone later, he set it on top of his balled up shirt and stood where the nurse asked him. After she snapped the required shots, she smiled and told him that he looked familiar but that she couldn’t place where she had seen him before. He slipped the leather cord with the stone back around his neck and tried to offer a few places where they might have met, but he could only come up with the name of his local grocery store. Shaking her head, she told him to get dressed and to sit back down in the wheelchair. As she pushed him into the waiting room, she said that she would see him later and told him that his films would be ready in a few minutes.